Screen:

The dedication of idealistic Israeli and Arab youth to achieve understanding and stop internecine strife in the Holy Land after the six‐day war is merely indicated melodramatically in “The Jerusalem File,” which opened yesterday at the R.K.O. 59th Street Twin Theater.

The importance of the issues and the character of its principals are, sadly enough, only shadowy footnotes to the sporadic shootings and Raoul Coutard's color photography of teeming Jerusalem and the sun‐drenched, arid archeological digs where it was shot with the vivid authenticity he captured in “Z” and some of the Godard films.

“The Jerusalem File” is a manhunt, essentially, despite Troy Kennedy Martin's script, which bristles with implications but cries for fuller explanations and John Flynn's energetic direction. Involved are Bruce Davison, as a seemingly apolitical American archeology student caught in the literal and political crossfire; Zeev Revah, once his classmate at Yale and now an Arab leader on the run from rival, dissident Arab terrorists, and Donald Pleasence, as an Israeli itelligence officer trailing Revah and Davison in order to end the clashes.

There also are Nicol Williamson, as a dourly realistic archeology professor anxious to achieve peace among the embattled; Dania Halprin, as a curvaceous Israeli student‐activist amorously torn between Williamson and Davison, and Koya Yair Rubin, as the Israeli student‐militant leader seeking a clandestine meeting with Revah through Davison, in order to settle all the unpleasantness.

Aside from their seriousness of purpose, they are largely two‐dimensional characters, with the exception of Donald Pleasence, who emerges as a convincingly human, if implacable, sleuth. A basic weakness of “The Jerusalem File” is perhaps underlined best by Mr. Williamson, when he snaps, “You're playing at politics and you're no good at it.”

The politics, the disparate motivations and the implicit drama of youth defeated by a world they don't want are only vaguely projected and are secondary to the chase and shoot‐ em‐up action of “The Jerusalem File.”

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